


Harbinger

by chiiyo86



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Dark, Gen, Memory Alteration, Reverse Chronology, Sam Saves Dean, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-05 13:59:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3122780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86/pseuds/chiiyo86
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Sam saves Dean from Hell. This is both the end and the beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Harbinger

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [spn-reversebang](http://spn-reversebang.livejournal.com/). Thank you so much to [amberdreams](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com) for her very inspiring art prompt, and for the rest of the awesome art she did for this fic (check her [art post](http://amberdreams.livejournal.com/285649.html))! I was a lucky author. Thank you also to [dollarformyname](http://dollarformyname.livejournal.com) for her life-saving beta work.

Sam stares down at his brother. His brother’s unconscious body, rather, lying on his side like a rag doll. A limp arm lies across his chest, flaccid dick like a rubber toy hanging between his legs. His mouth is slack and half open. The absurd picture of a drunk man sleeping the booze off, spread across the carpet of a motel room. Except that for all the drinking Dean has done, Sam has never seen him reach that level of indignity. And this body—Dean’s, really? can’t be, has to be—is unblemished, not a scar, not a mark, no skin discoloration. No tattoo, either.

Sam takes a sudden, gasping breath. Since he came back from the liquor store he’s been standing in the doorway of his motel room, long enough to forget how to breathe. He closes the door behind him, paranoid now at the thought that someone could see Dean from the parking lot. It cuts off the light from the outside and the room is swathed in long, thin shadows, a whole forest worth of them silhouetted against the walls. Sam ignores this and walks the distance separating him from Dean’s body, and with each step his heart beats harder. He kneels by Dean’s side—if Dean is dead, he thinks, _still_ dead, and this is just his body that has traveled through mysterious ways from Pontiac to here, then Sam will go mad. Madder. Will instantly lose his last shred of sanity and start raving in the streets. This is a promise.

It doesn’t look like Dean’s chest is moving at all and Sam can’t hear him breathing, but then his vision is blurry and his ears are ringing so it doesn’t mean much. He has to check. Yes, that’s what he has to do; having a clear plan of action is a relief. Right when he leans to put his head against his brother’s pale, smooth chest, Dean opens his eyes and his mouth. And screams.

Sam jerks and scrambles backwards on his hands and ass. And Dean screams: a long, shrill, uninterrupted cry. His eyes are open and his pupils blown wide. He doesn’t look at Sam nor does he seem to see anything else, his vacant stare fixed somewhere above Sam’s head. Screaming, but not moving much apart from the feeble flutter of his hands and feet: weak twitches like a dying fish too long out of the water.

Sam recovers from his shock and crawls back to Dean, wraps his arms around him and hauls him against his chest. Dean’s cold—funny, Sam would’ve thought that Hell’s fires would have warmed him up by now—his hair is damp, and he smells like humus. Like earth after a shower of rain.

After a while his voice breaks and he keeps screaming soundlessly, teeth digging into Sam’s shoulder.

Lying down on his bed, Sam has now spent hours staring up at the ceiling. It was probably white at some point. It’s now marred with humidity stains spreading in rings of progressively paler brown, and the paint is flaking in a cracked pattern that makes the surface look like dried earth in the desert. Sam has stared at one of the stains, the one directly above his head, for so long that it’s starting to take on a more meaningful shape: a bird, feathered tail at the back and cruel beak on the front. The AC roars from under the window, making the curtain ripple.

Something knocks against the window pane: _poc-poc-poc_ , the rhythmic sound of something hard and pointy hitting the glass. It’s suddenly cooler in the room and Sam smells that smell again, the rich scent of forest grounds. 

“Right,” he says to the emptiness of the room. 

Somehow, he knew all along that it was coming.

He pushes himself off the bed, dragging the bedspread alongside him as he moves, and hauls himself up to his feet, feeling like he’s hoisting a dead body, _his_ dead body. He feels starkly lucid, but the effects of the alcohol he absorbed hours ago make his limbs clumsy. He stumbles over one of his shirts that’s lying between the twin beds, staggers up to the window. 

It’s dark outside but he can see the crow perched on the windowsill: it has a black tail and a black head, black spilling over its breast like ink while the rest of its body is gray. It looks at Sam and Sam looks at it, and his hands go the bottom of the window to open it. He steps aside and lets the bird fly into the room, closes the window behind it, and when he turns around there she is, cloaked in midnight blue, hair like fire spread over her shoulders. She hasn’t managed to surprise Sam this time, because his heart is a dead stone hanging behind his ribs.

He doesn’t let her the time to try her spiel again. “Okay,” he says. “Do as you must.”

She has him drink something that tastes sweet with a bitter aftertaste and that has the vivid color of arterial blood, and Sam thinks, _of course_. He barely has to fight the warning murmur at the back of his mind of _never drink, never eat anything from them_. He drinks from the wooden cup to the last drop, and when he’s finished he sees a small smile stir her lips. It doesn’t look mocking or gloating, more like genuine contentment. The thought that this is a deal that Sam won’t eventually regret is a strange sort of comfort.

She doesn’t need him to open the window or the door to vanish. Maybe the act of letting her in was the real moment when Sam sealed the bargain. He lurches back to the bed, unable to think of anything to do while he waits for the outcome, whatever it is. His head’s spinning a little harder than before even though there was no alcohol he could taste in the beverage he drank. On his way back he knocks down the empty glass on the nightstand with a wayward limb and it crashes on the floor. Sam stares at the shards where it shattered, uncomprehending at first. When his sluggish mind slowly connects the dots, he throws his head back and starts laughing. 

Time really is just a matter of perception.

Eventually, Dean falls asleep. Or maybe asleep isn’t the best word for it—rather, falls into an uneasy form of unconsciousness. Sam has to drag his heavy ass— _dead body, chest slashed to a bloody pulp_ —to the untouched bed and he tucks him inside, still naked under the covers.

Then he sits on the floor, his back against the wall, where humidity makes the wallpaper swell and warp. His arms around his knees, he tries to digest everything that has just happened. His brother, back from the dead. Alive but broken, and maybe irreparably so. Instead of feeling elated, or even merely relieved, Sam’s suddenly deadly afraid: he never thought beyond getting Dean back, has foolishly assumed that once resurrected Dean would be just like his old self, like no time had passed. If Dean never gets better, what will become of him?

 _Bobby_ , Sam thinks, but makes no move to grab his phone and call the man. He hasn’t talked to Bobby in months, and he has so much to explain. Right now, he can’t. He gets up and goes to pick up the bag he dropped to the floor when he discovered Dean; he looks at the whisky bottle inside, thinks about opening it, but his eyes get caught on the lump formed by Dean’s body in the bed and instead he throws the bottle away. Once he’s sobered up completely, he knows he’s probably going to regret that decision.

Dean wakes up a few hours later, just as Sam’s ass is starting to get numb. From his spot on the floor Sam notices immediately when Dean groans and stirs, right before his eyes flutter open. Sam braces himself for another fit of screaming but Dean doesn’t open his mouth. His eyes, though, are mobile and alert, flitting around the room like he wants to take it all in at once.

This show of lucidity, miles away from the relentless screaming from before, reassures Sam enough for him to stand up and say, “Hey. How’re you feeling?”

Dean doesn’t answer; Sam isn’t surprised but still feels his heart sink. “Do you want something to eat? To drink, maybe?” 

Dean’s eyes are unnervingly fixed on him. There’s no way to tell if he recognizes Sam, perceives him as a threat, or can even identify him as a fellow human being. It looks like Sam’s going to have to decide all by himself. He doesn’t know if Dean’s in need of food—how could he assess the needs of a formerly dead body?—but he definitely hurt something with all the screaming he did. “Water it is, then.”

This is easier said than done, because as soon as he sees Sam come close Dean scoots back on the bed. He jostles the glass with uncoordinated movements, choking on the little water Sam manages to pour into his throat. He doesn’t scream again but emits these broken, anguished little sounds that make Sam eventually stop trying and back off.

Sam goes back to his spot on the floor and stays there, keeping vigil.

Sam comes to with a gasp, chest burning, desperately trying to gulp the air he needs. Someone’s hand presses on his shoulder to keep him down and with blind instinct he tries to fight it.

“Easy, man, take it easy. Christ.”

Sam lies back, blinks a few times to clear his vision. A warm tear trickles down from the corner of his eye and the sight of the dirty motel ceiling welcomes him back to the world of the living. The puke-green color of the wallpaper is making him nauseous. 

“I needed more time!” His chest still feels tight and it’s a chore to muster the strength to get his annoyance across. “Just—just a few more minutes and I’d have—”

Jake, the skinny medical student with the spider web tattoo poking out of the collar his shirt, clicks his tongue in disgust and waves the syringe he has in his hand. “You were out for seven minutes, dude! If someone shows up and finds us like this, I’ll have a hell of a hard time explaining it.”

Sam grabs his wrist and tugs at it urgently, feeling bird-like bones under his fingers. “I didn’t have the time to do what I wanted. I need to go back. You need to put me under one more time.”

“Nuh huh. No way. I need to do no such thing.” Jake grips at Sam’s fingers, trying to unclasp them from his arm. “If I stop your heart again you’ll die, for good this time.”

“I didn’t know you cared.” Sam lets go of Jake; his hands are shaking and his heart is fluttering off beat.

“Well, I don’t, but then I’d be the one to deal with your massive dead body. I don’t know if that’s your kink, man, and I frankly don’t give a flying fuck. But you find another sucker to help you get your rocks off.”

As he speaks he withdraws the needle from the IV out of Sam’s vein, leaving a single drop of blood behind. He doesn’t wait before he starts packing the stuff he’s spread over the other bed in the room—twin to Sam’s own, because Sam still hasn’t gotten rid of that habit—IV bag, syringes, blood pressure monitor, complicated-looking devices that Jake probably used to make sure Sam kept on living. He keeps shooting nervous little glances in direction of the door, and Sam wonders if someone came knocking and that’s what’s got Jake suddenly so skittish. 

“Gimme my money,” Jakes demands, palm out.

Sam could grab his gun and _make_ Jake do what he wants. But then, all that Jake would have to do is not bring Sam back and it would all come to naught. So Sam sighs and fishes fifty dollars from his jeans. Jake pockets the money and scurries off without a goodbye. 

Once he’s gone, Sam’s left alone. Part of him can’t help but try to come up with a new plan, or at least salvage his current plan, but the rest of him recalls what just went on: wandering around in spirit state, trying to get a reaper to talk to him. He _thinks_ he saw some people look directly at him, but no ghosts or reapers answered his calls. _None of them wants to deal with you._

Sam has felt discouraged before and this isn’t anything close to that. It’s a feeling that goes beyond, that hollows him from the inside out, leaving nothing behind but an empty shell. _Nothing_. The word swirls around in his head until it’s devoid of meaning, and Sam gets up to pour himself a drink, using a proper glass, something he hasn’t done since Dean died. Nothing left to do. Nothing left to hope. That first glass is followed by a second, then a third, but the usual rush of warmth that comes with the hard stuff is missing.

He drinks until the bottle is empty and yet he still doesn’t feel a thing.

The first few days, Sam and Dean circle around each other like two wary animals. Dean jumps at shadows and stares at Sam blankly when he talks most of the time, but then when Sam tries to break up some of the inevitable boredom of being cooped up by watching questionable TV shows, or lighten the mood a little by listening to current music on the radio, Dean glares at him like Sam's the one who's lost his mind and violently pulls the plug. Those occasional fits of defiance give Sam a tentative kind of hope that some of his brother remains intact buried under the ashes of everything that was burned by Hell’s flames.

Getting Dean to eat and drink is a continuous struggle, because Dean never lets Sam get close enough, so after a while Sam takes to leaving glasses of water and plates of soft food where Dean can find them. Dean doesn’t like to be watched while he’s eating but Sam still catches a glimpse or two of it and is surprised that for all that Dean acts animal-like, he eats more or less like a human being. He doesn’t spill any of the water, always eats using the spoon Sam left him, but he approaches the food cautiously and eats slowly, in small, careful nibbles. Some form of body memory, most probably, because he still doesn’t seem to recognize Sam.

Of course, they quickly run out of food and Sam is forced to make a trip to the grocery store. Dean watches warily as Sam makes for the door, huddled in a corner, wrapped in a sheet because Sam hasn’t yet found a nonthreatening way to address the issue of clothes. He worries that Dean might try to run away while he's gone but there's no getting around it. He can't take Dean anywhere like this. Sam locks the door but the whole twenty minutes he spends at the store his stomach churns at the thought of everything that could happen to his vulnerable, traumatized brother if he’s let loose. 

During the trip his phone starts ringing, but he barely glance at caller’s ID before he turns it off. He almost runs back to the motel, and when he walks past the lobby, the motel owner waves to get his attention through the glass door. Annoyed at the delay, Sam looks to the door to his room, up on the first floor behind the railing. He hesitates, but the man waves again, more insistently, and looks about five seconds away from leaving his counter to come to Sam.

“Is there a problem?” Sam asks as soon he enters the lobby. 

The man looks him over with a slight frown, making Sam suddenly self-conscious of his wrinkled, unkempt appearance. He’s a round, grandfatherly type with a long snow-white moustache and knobby hands. Sam has been there for weeks and the man has always been unfailingly friendly.

“I don’t mind pets in the motel,” the motel owner says. “As long as it doesn’t bother the other customers, that is.”

Sam blinks at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“Your dog’s been screaming bloody murder and people are complaining. It’s not the first time. You gotta keep him quiet or find somewhere else to stay.”

“My—” Oh god. “I’m sorry. I—it won’t happen again, I promise.”

When Sam gets back to the room he can hear Dean’s screams before he even opens the door. He rushes inside, drops his grocery bag on the floor, and calls, “Dean!” 

At first he can’t see his brother anywhere, but he quickly realizes the screaming is coming from under the bed.

“Hey, hey.” Sam kneels to peer under the bed. In the shadows he can make out the crouching figure of his brother. “Dean. I’m here, man. It’s okay.”

He manages to coax Dean into crawling out. Dean’s pale skin is red in patches from carpet burns and his eyes are wide and panicked, just like when he came back, except that he sees Sam this time.

“You’re okay,” Sam says, and holds his hand out.

And then, miracle of miracles, Dean takes the hand and squeezes it hard, holding onto it like a lifeline.

Sam pins Ruby against the wall, her arms around his neck and her legs wrapped over his hips. They’re so close they’re sharing breath, warm and moist puffs that smell like the coffee they both drank in the morning. Even then he presses closer, trapping her between the wall and his body, burying himself deeper and making her utter a sound that is half a moan, half a laugh.

“Eager much?” she says breathlessly. 

Her dark eyes twinkle, she’s so smug about it. She doesn’t see it coming when Sam reaches for the hidden spot behind the dresser. She gasps, a mere exhalation, when he presses the edge of her own demon-killing knife under her chin. To her credit, the only sign that she’s nervous is the way the tendons in her neck strain against the blade.

“Pain play?” she says. “Sammy, I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Don’t call me ‘Sammy’,” he says on a growl. He’s all too aware of the way he’s clamped between her thighs, how it’s both still turning him on and reminded him of the fact that, petite or not, she’s stronger than him. 

“Why not? Because it’s reminding you of Dean? Dean’s in Hell, remember?” He flinches, and instead of getting meaner she softens and uses a gentle voice to say, “I know it’s a heavy burden to carry, Sam. But you need to keep your eyes on the prize. Lilith tore your brother’s body apart and threw his soul into the fires of eternal damnation.”

It’s a wonder he never saw the manipulation for what it is sooner: the Ruby from a couple of months ago would never had spoken to him like to a traumatized child. He tightens his grip on the knife’s handle, wanting her to know he means business. He’s still hard inside her and his blood pounds relentless in his temples. He feels, shamefully, more alive than he has since Dean died.

“I heard you,” he says, compelled to lay down the evidence before melting out the punishment. “When you were talking with Lilith, using a cup of the blood of that poor hitchhiker!” 

“What did you hear?”

“ _Sam’s almost ready for the next step_. What’s the next step?” When she opens her mouth to answer: “You know what? It doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t it?” She unlocks her fingers from behind his neck and one of her slender hands slides down to his shoulder, the caress of a lover. “Think about it, Sam. How’re you going to get by all alone?”

At the hint of her smirk Sam feels a surge of something too dark to quite be anger, and he swiftly slices her throat open. The wound sizzles with bluish energy and Sam tries to step away, but one of her hands is still clasped at the nape of his neck and he can’t avoid the warm splash of blood, the flow that runs like a fountain from her throat and mouth. Within seconds he’s covered in it. Her eyes stay locked with his for the last few sparks of her life, expressing mostly surprise, until they get dull and her face freezes with the mask of death.

He pries her off of him and she slumps to the floor in a boneless heap. He’s left wet and sticky with blood, his pants down to knees, his half-hard dick dangling awkwardly in the wind. He can’t seem to be able to catch his breath.

_How’re you going to get by all alone?_

Getting by? He’ll manage. Remaining sane is another matter. His stash of options is dwindling by the day.

The weeks fly by and Dean improves a lot faster than Sam would have expected. At week three he started talking again, his first word being _‘shit’_ , dropped in a rough exhalation. Even now, Dean still sounds like his throat is packed with crushed glass. As soon as he could get Dean outside Sam packed them into the Impala, because since the incident with Dean howling like a madman Sam had started to get odd looks from the motel owner every time he walked by the lobby. Dean ran his hands all over the car before he climbed inside, and spent the whole trip with his face almost glued to the window, his breath fogging the glass as he watched miles of green and gold prairies roll by.

Sam stopped them at Hibbing, Minnesota, and they’re holed up in another non-descript motel. Dean, now wearing clothes at least ten hours a day, spends his time watching life go by outside of the window, arms wrapped around himself like he’s cold all the time. He doesn’t comment much on anything, doesn’t talk about his time in Hell at all—maybe he doesn’t even remember it. In truth, Sam isn’t sure how much he remembers: even though he acts like he trusts Sam now, he’s never said his name.

All in all, it makes for long and boring days, and once the novelty of having Dean back has worn off a little and his brother doesn’t need around the clock attention anymore, Sam starts getting stir crazy.

“Hey, Dean.”

“Hmm?”

Sam casts his brother a look from over the screen of his laptop. Dean does respond to his name, most of the time, but once again Sam isn’t sure if it’s because he recognizes it from before, or because he’s gotten used to Sam addressing him that way. 

“Do you mind if I leave you on your own for a few hours?”

 _That_ makes Dean pay attention: he shifts in his seat, an uneasy squirm, and says in a gravelly voice: “Grocery?”

“Yeah.” Sam isn’t sure why he’s lying, except that his brother is so fragile right now, a broken porcelain figure with its pieces badly glued back together. “But I’m, um, I’m shopping from some very specific items and it’s going to take me longer than usual.”

Once upon a time, Dean wouldn’t have been happy with that level of detail. He would’ve demanded to know more—hell, he would’ve wanted to come with. But this version of Dean just slowly nods his head, chin down to his breastbone, like he doesn’t quite have the hang of that gesture anymore. Maybe to this Dean, Sam is nothing more than the guy who keeps him fed and guards his doorway.

Going out on a regular hunt is a singular relief after the past few weeks—past few months, really. This hunt is a no-brainer: a string of bloodless corpses quickly leads Sam to a vampire’s nest, and Sam gets to chop off a few heads. It’s a bit touch-and-go when he loses his machete during the fight and one of the vampires gets the drop on him. Sam is forced to finish him off with a crowbar and it gets a little messy. 

Leaving the warehouse where the vampires had established their nest, Sam takes his jacket off and wads it up to hide the gore. He walks out of a darker alley to get to a floodlit street, quickening his stride when he realizes that he’s left Dean alone for over four hours. As he digs the Impala key out of his pocket, he hears someone call his name and, startled, reaches for his machete, hidden inside the bundle of his jacket.

“Sam? It _is_ you. What are you doing here?”

Sam turns around, his fingers wrapped around the handle of his weapon still hidden from view. “I’m sorry?”

The woman talking to him has auburn hair and sharp features, but what draws Sam’s eyes is the star pinned to the beige shirt of her uniform. “What can I do for you, deputy?”

She narrows her eyes. “Where’s your brother?”

“My…” How the hell does she know about Dean? “Do I know you?”

“You really don’t remember? I know it’s been two years, but… I’m Kathleen Hudak. You’d been taken by the Bender family and I helped your brother look for you. And, well, got captured too. I can’t believe you would forget something like this.”

Looking at her face, Sam tries to conjure a memory of that two-year old meeting but all he can recall is a vague image of that same face seen through the wires of a cage. It feels so flimsy it could just be his brain running with what she told him rather than a real memory.

“Of course!” he says, manufacturing a smile, “Deputy Hudak, yes. How’re you doing?”

“Fine.” Her face is still scrunched up with… something. “Listen, it’s not that I don’t trust you and Dean not to… well, you know what I mean.” Sam has no idea, but he nods anyway. He’s sore and tired and wants to get back to his brother. “But it’s dangerous for you too. Your brother impersonated an officer of the law, after all.”

“Oh, okay,” Sam says, feeling like he understands what she’s getting at. “Don’t worry, we’re just passing through. We’ll be out of your hair.”

“Alright.” She smiles, but it’s oddly twisted. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to sound like I—”

“It’s not a problem,” Sam cuts her off. “Really. We were leaving anyway.”

“If you say so. Say hello to Dean for me.”

“Will do.”

When Sam goes back to the motel he crams all their clothing into their duffle bags and they hurry the fuck out of Hibbing, Minnesota.

Sam finds a public restroom where he can wash his hands of the crossroads demon’s blood. He cleans up the knife then, goes as far as scrubbing the blood and dirt that got stuck in the grooves of the symbols engraved along the blade. He keeps hearing his dad’s voice in his head, chiding him about taking care of the blade lest it get rusty. Dean, of course, always did it right, and Sam feels an absurd wave of resentment surge up, stale from having been pushed at the back of his mind for so long. How totally ridiculous it is to feel that way, and yet. Dad’s not here anymore, Dean’s not here— _and the fucking demon won’t deal_ —but Sam _is_ here, thinking about petty childhood gripes that don’t matter to anyone left alive.

The door to the restroom creaks and Sam stashes the blade inside his jacket and shuts off the water. He punches at the hand-dryer, aware of the stare from the newcomer burning holes into his shoulder blades. Not much he can do about the bloodstains on his front. He doesn’t turn around to look at the newcomer, but from the labored way he breathes and the sound of his footsteps he knows it’s a heavyset man, probably none too healthy. The man doesn’t say anything, not even a word of greeting, and when Sam hears the sound of the stall door clapping shut he leaves the restroom.

He idly wonders if the guy’s about to call the cops on him, or if right now he’s trying to convince himself there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for a giant stranger having blood on his jacket. 

Dawn’s just starting to bleach the sky and Sam’s now gone another night without sleep. No sleep beats dreams of Dean calling his name, calling for help. Sam knows he’s eventually going to crash—alcohol can only sustain you for so long—but he thinks he must have sprained his caring muscle. He buries his hands into his jacket, feeling the weight of the knife against his ribs, hunches his shoulders up even though it’s mild out and he knows the cold he feels comes from within, and walks down the street.

The weather’s murky despite the temperature, dirty clouds hiding the sun and diffusing its light. Sam walks with his eyes on the ground, not wanting to meet anyone’s eye. If he’s drawing looks, he’s not aware of it, and frankly he’s too weary to care. Still, a string of _caw! caw!_ makes his head whip up. Too strident, the sound stands out against the hum of street life. Sam’s eyes sweep over the cars parked along the sidewalk, the people walking opposite from him, the windows of the shops on his side of the street, until he sees it. 

Perched on the grass-green awning of a bakery is a black and gray hooded crow. Its head turns as Sam passes by, like a live weathercock spinning with the direction of the wind.

“Sam.”

Sam pauses in the process of locking the motel room door behind him. It’s the first time since coming back that his brother calls him by his name.

“Yeah?” He turns around slowly and sees that his brother’s standing at the foot of his bed, watching Sam. His clothes hang wrong on his frame, like they belong to someone else, and he so rarely goes out in the sun that his skin is as pale as the zombie Sam just nailed to its coffin. Actually, now that he thinks about it, his brother _is_ some kind of zombie.

“You’ve been gone for a day.” His brother’s hands keep fiddling with something that Sam eventually realizes is his phone. 

“I guess I forgot my phone,” he says. He hasn’t really used it in days. Sometimes it rang, and it got so annoying that Sam put it on mute.

“Yeah. Someone called.”

Sam takes off his jacket and drapes it over the back of a chair. He hasn’t had this long of a conversation with his brother in… quite a while. “Who was it?”

“Ellen.” In the process of checking his gun, counting how many iron rounds he used on the zombie, Sam misses his brother’s approach. When he raises his head, he realizes he’s now just an arm’s length from him. “She said she keeps trying to call you, but you never answer. She says she and Bobby worry about you. She was surprised that I…”

His brother is full of names, tonight. But talking so much seems difficult for him, because he takes a deep, trembling breath and sits down on the chair where Sam hanged his jacket. “She wants you to call her back. And to call Bobby.”

“Okay, no problem. I’ll do it as soon as you tell me who the hell those people are.”

His brother looks at him, and Sam knows he’s said the wrong thing. There’s a strange sensation at the pit of his stomach, like he swallowed something hard and heavy. He breathes, trying to get the feeling to pass.

“You don’t know?”

“Because you do?” Sam shoots back. “You haven’t even said my name since you’ve been back. I thought you didn’t remember it.”

“I… do. I just—Sam. Sam.” His brother looks at him with very bright eyes. “Can you say _my_ name?”

Sam’s words get stuck inside his throat. For a moment, silence hangs heavily between them, until the tension is broken by a loud rumbling sound. His brother’s mouth twists and he presses a hand over his stomach.

“I’m hungry.”

“Yeah.” Sam tries to remember the last time he went grocery shopping and draws a blank. “I’ll go get you some food.”

He knew it was probably only a matter of time before things came to a head with Bobby. For weeks they’ve both been haunting Bobby’s house, two lost souls caught up in their grief and anger, passing by each other but never really connecting over their shared loss. But it is Bobby’s house, and since Dad’s death Bobby has felt some kind of fatherly responsibility for Sam and Dean, so at the beginning of week four he says, “Look at you! What kind of fool answer do you think you’re going to find in those books? When was the last time you washed? When was the last time you ate or slept?”

Washing is so far from being one of Sam’s concerns that he has to snort at the question. Eating—he knows enough to know that in order to save Dean he has to keep his strength up. Sleeping—now that’s another matter.

“Save it,” he mumbles, keeping his eyes fixed on the book open before him even though the words don’t register. He knew it was coming, and yet he isn’t sure how to react. “Why do you care all of a sudden?”

He knows it’s unfair of him even before he hears Bobby’s sharp intake of breath. “You’re breaking my heart, son.”

“Sorry, Bobby.”

“I’m just worried about you. If your brother could see you right now, he would worry too. He’d want you to—”

Sam snaps his book shut, making little puffs of dust fly. “Don’t talk about what Dean would or wouldn’t want.” He hasn’t really spent much time thinking about Dean as a person since he died: every time he does, what he feels is too potent and messy to handle.

“You know I’m telling the truth. Sam, for god’s sake, would you look at me?”

Sam turns to Bobby then, who looks sad and wrinkled, new gray hairs in his beard and dark bags under his eyes. “Do you think I can’t smell the whisky in your breath?” Sam says, cruelly. “You have no grounds to lecture me.”

Bobby ignores the jab. “Way I see it, you’re just looking for a way to destroy yourself, and I can’t let that happen again. Not under my watch.”

“Right,” Sam says and even to himself he sounds eerily calm. He casts a regretful look at the book he’s holding, but he’s already read through it and he feels that he’s done enough research for now. It’s time to act on it. “You won’t have to watch any of it. I’ll leave you alone.”

“You—Damn it, Sam! This wasn’t what I meant!”

Sam walks around the room collecting his stuff and ignoring Bobby’s calls: “Sam, what’re you doing? Boy, you know I’m not kicking you out. Listen to me!” There is woefully little that belongs to him and Sam is quickly packed. Before he leaves, he makes himself stop and say, “Thanks for everything, Bobby.”

_If you walk out that door, don’t you ever come back!_

_What the hell is wrong with you? Sam!_

He opens his eyes to a dark room, the echoes of a conversation fading away quickly in his mind. The light of early morning is already filtering through the gap between the curtains, painting pale stripes over the bedspread. He pushes the covers back and rises. It’s cold enough in the room that he feels his skin tighten with goosebumps. He locates his clothes quickly and gets dressed without turning on the light, only bumping once against the other bed of the room. It’s important that he hurries up. 

He fills a duffle bag with weapons: guns, an assortment of ammo, a scythe, a flare gun. The bag clunks as he hauls it up onto his shoulder, and he hears a human groan coming from the darker part of the room, the one further from the window. He stills, waiting to see if he can hear that sound again, but the only audible noises are coming from the street. He pulls on the drawstring of his bag, wonders briefly about food but dismisses the thought. He won’t need it where he’s going.

It’s time to leave. He can feel it like a bell going off in his mind. As he makes it to the door he pauses with his hand hovering over the doorknob, a moment of suspended time. But something’s calling him from beyond distances, something raw and primal that is as necessary as the air that he breathes. He can’t not answer it anymore than he could stop his own heart from beating. He opens the door and steps outside the room.

It’s the peculiar smell that alerts Sam that something’s amiss. For days he has barely been aware of anything—hunger, thirst, exhaustion, Bobby’s constant presence, none of it more than a blip on his radar. What he knows: the nightmarish pictures of hellhounds in his books, the cruel depictions of Hell, the Latin rituals. The scratch of his pen on the paper.

That smell, though, somehow manages to reach him through the haze surrounding him. It’s an earthy smell: sap from the trees, leaves decomposing on a forest ground, something that straddles the frontier between life and death. Inside Bobby’s it usually smells like dog, old books, and coffee.

Sam puts his pen down on his notepad. “Bobby?” he calls in a voice rough with disuse.

He can’t even remember if Bobby told him he was going somewhere. He pushes his chair back, trying to remember where he left his gun. The smell intensifies and all of a sudden the room seems darker, shadowy. He hears a flapping sound, then the swish of fabric. He whirls around, his heart hammering in his chest and his skin prickling with the sudden influx of adrenaline.

“What—Who the hell are you?”

There’s a woman, standing poised among the chaos of Bobby’s living room, right in-between two piles of books that look dangerously close to collapsing at her feet. She’s wrapped in a dark blue cloak and the color clashes with the vivid hue of her red hair, glowing like smoldering embers under the overhead light. Her features look human—or at least she has a nose, a mouth, and two wide eyes. The irises are a dense black that show no pupil and her face is narrow, chin sharp like the tip of an arrow. Her skin is very pale and smooth like the skin of a porcelain doll. Sam doesn’t need to be told that she’s something otherworldly.

“Christo,” he says, but isn’t surprised when she doesn’t flinch.

Instead, she smiles. Her lips are a red so intense it looks like she just dipped them into fresh blood. “None of them will come,” she says. ”They don’t want to deal with you; they’ve been burned before.”

Sam’s been thinking about deals, with Lilith or another crossroad demon, but he’s not clear on whether that’s what she’s talking about. How would she know, anyway?

“What’re you saying?”

“I can get you what you want.”

Sam wants to ask how she knows what he wants, but he’s danced that dance before and it’s a waste of time to ask questions whose answers he doesn’t really care about. Time‘s a precious commodity these days; Dean has been gone for three weeks, two days, and four hours.

“Time is only a matter of perception.”

Sam grits his teeth. Is she fucking reading his mind? “What do you want?”

“You want your brother back. I want _you_.”

“What do you want with me?”

“I want a warrior.”

Sam swipes a hand across his brow. Now that he’s stopped working, the exhaustion he ignored is catching up with him and his head’s swimming. “To fight in what war? I kinda have my hands full with this one.”

“All kinds of wars.” Her voice is deep, almost too deep for a woman—not that she’s any kind of woman, really—and it doesn’t rise above a murmur, yet her words reach Sam, clear and distinct. “It doesn’t matter what they are, it only matters that they are mine. As you will be: _my_ warrior, fighting _my_ wars.”

Among the folds of her cloak Sam catches sight of a pale hand, with fingers just a little too long to be quite normal, and pale, polished fingernails. He still feels hazy and like his head is full of cotton, but he’s starting to get a little alarmed by the oddness of the situation. He should be trying to poke holes into her, not making conversation. That’s what his brother would say.

“And you would bring Dean back?”

“I would.”

“And then I would—what, just go with you?”

“You’d need to be mine, first. You’d need to give me your memories and your feelings and everything human about you.”

“Wait, what? My memories? You mean I would forget—“

“All that is yours.”

Everything, all his memories of everyone he’s ever loved and everything happy that he’s ever held. It’s hard to fathom, imagining himself still living, still thinking, but deprived of all the layers that have made him the man he is today. _I would forget Dad, Jess, Bobby, Ellen. Dean._

“No,” he says, startled by his own boldness. He still has options, rituals to try and magic to decipher, and if she is what he’s starting to suspect she is, then her kind is a fickle one, untrustworthy. This is a bad idea all around. “I’m sorry, but no.”

He steels himself against her possible wrath, ready to fight back if needed. She moves forward, gliding over to him rather than walking, and Sam closes his fists in a futile attempt to prepare himself against her assault.

“Careful,” she says, her voice so close it sounds like she’s whispering in his ear.

“What?”

“Don’t step on the glass.”

She rushes at him and Sam reflexively shuts his eyes, raising his arms in defense, but all he feels is a blast of cool air and when he opens his eyes again the woman’s gone. 

In her place is a black and gray crow that flies off through the open window.


End file.
